dokebi club

anime director dies at 46

2010-08-27T03:48:00.003-05:00

)DAmn it. This blog is supposed to be about Korean animation & comics, but I keep finding stuffs to write about Japanese anime. The trouble is that I prefer film over paper, and animations from Korea are few while there are plenty of Japanese anime's to watch.)

Satoshi Kon died on Tuesday this week, which would be August 24, 2010. He is a noteworthy anime director who produced Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers, Shounen Bat, and the Millenium Actress, two of which I've watched and are definitely my favorites. I would compare him to Hayao Miyazaki, except I never got the point of any of his films, including Spirited Away and Laputa. Oh wait - Howl's Moving Castle was awesome!

What surprised me was that Satoshi Kon was merely 46 years old, but he was killed by pancreatic cancer. And I had thought he would be around for a long time.

His works were awesome, so much that I think they improved anime's overall image and the scope of what's possible and what to expect. I remember there was so much thrill and mystery in Paprika, and Dr. Chiba was drawn so nicely too. I was able to enjoy the same sort of mystery and complex storytelling in Shounen Bat, and I shouldn't forget to mention that I also watched the Millenium Actress, whose distinctly Japanese looks I appreciated very much.

I think Satoshi was concerned largely with people's memory and its psychological aspect and mystery. If you think about it, most of his works seem to come down to that small thing concerning memory.

I think Ms. Napier's tributes were appropriate. I just wish she'd have said something about the importance of memory.

I kind of said this before, but, if there is another thing to mention about him, it's that he really did try to draw Asians at their best, which is quite hard to do in an anime style as I've found out in my own trials. He didn't give up and start drawing something like this:

(Yea Suzumiya looks great, but can you tell a trace of Asian-ness in her?)

Things I've noticed about Japanese anime pt. 2

2010-08-24T01:16:00.003-05:00

Another thing about Japanese anime is that in most cases it does not illustrate what living in Japan is really like, both for Japanese natives and foreigners as well. Although I've never lived in Japan, I am sure of this, having watched or read people's testimonies on youtube and various blogs. Sometimes anime completely misconstrues what happens in real life, and other times it presents the topic from the wrong angle.

For example, ~~school girls do not wear mini skirts~~, and cultural festivals do not turn every schools into maid cafe theme parks. And curry isn't the only thing Japanese like to eat for dinner. The list can go on as to show how Japan is significantly more perverted in anime than in real life.

I think this sense of other-worldliness can be explained by two things. First, anime bears a negative connotation in Japan that, while it appears in the mainstream for kids, puts adult fans in a bad light. Because of this, anime schools are attended by people who are generally poor financially and academically and are in the margins of the society, and so the animators are obviously going to have a perception of the world that is drastically different from the normal experience. The other reason is that anime serves as an escape from the real world for its audience, although people of different cultures have different things to escape from. I think for some Asians there can be this desire to separate oneself from certain practices or situations in a uniquely Asian context that are humiliating or unsettling. Students (including those in Korea) may want to completely do away with gym/disciplinary teachers who mete out embarrassing corporal punishments. Or guys might get sick of old ladies (including their moms) who are obsessed with store prices and haggling. And some Asians may wish their language sounded more sophisticated in western style and less "piko-piko" or "chingchongching"-ish. And it is in the backdrop of this self-hating repulsion (but it's not anything serious) that emerges a paradisiacal image of a western medieval castle with a princess and a knight in shining armor, which then is the alternate reality of the anime.

I've also found that it's hard to find kids in anime who actually have parents or interact with them. A surprisingly large number of animes feature main characters as orphans or living separated from their parents (including Full Metal Panic, Elfen Lied, Neon Genesis Evangelion, True Tears, School Rumble, and Suzumiya Haruhi). And in the animes that depict parents, even for a brief moment, they are merely annoyances or play subservient and non-intrusive roles for the main characters. This could be because a lot of people in the animation industry are likely to have been students with poor grades when they were teenagers, and that generally correlates with more problems and difficult relationships with parents. Also, the teenagers, who are a main audience group, probably won't like having to deal with mom and dad even on the tv screen.

We've seen how animators like to deviate from the real world in their works, but some have surprised me with their depiction of scenery or personalities with such character and realism. Believe it or not, some of the characters in anime can actually be found in real life with the same impressionistic facial traits, dress style, and language. For example, the aunt in Summer Wars is so like the mean aunt you meet in a gathering among relatives of a large extended family, and you want to hate and ridicule her face, but you really can't because she doesn't look bad at all.

The aunt is on the right with red hair

In A Place Promised In Early Days, Takuya and Hiroki are example of childhood friends who differ sentimentally in their attachment to each other when they become adults. One is naturally going to look coldhearted and insensitive, while the other will seem naive and idealistic.

Also, I was delighted to watch how kids in Denno Coil like to play in the streets in an army command style because I've seen that myself when I was a kid and was living in Korea. It would be hard to imagine how that would happen in America, since kids are confined to playing sports on the grass or at home and are sheltered from the street influences.

For some reason I can't think up more examples, so I will call it for this post.

Things I've noticed about Japanese anime pt. 1

2010-03-06T20:54:00.029-06:00

Occasionally I have the urge to do random things, like making a youtube video with ysflight, and, recently, writing a wiki encyclopedia article about anime (and that's why the blog hasn't been updated in 3 months). But since I will never finish it, and no one will actually read it, I've decided to spend more time writing on this blog again.

Ever since I started watching anime since ... 1995? I've noticed certain things that are common in anime or its genres. (My TV at home had a channel (probably Tooniverse) that was dedicated to anime and cartoons 24/7. I vaguely remember when I was about 4 years old, and I could not finish watching one of the last episodes of Nadia with the flying N-Nautilus submarine because my mom had to take me to a dinner. At the time I presumed all anime's were Korean because the anime title, character names, opening and ending songs, and voice acting were all changed to Korean or the Korean equivalent of a western name or word.)

Anyways I want to talk about some common features of Japanese anime that other people might have or not have noticed over the years.

First thing is that the main characters and the main antagonists tend to be lighter skinned and more caucasian than the side characters. You can clearly see it in the differences between Shinji Ikari/Shinichirō Nakagami and Toji Suzuhara/Miyokichi Nobuse in Neon Genesis Evangelion and True Tears, respectively. Always in a Gundam series, the maintenance staff are dark-skinned, blackish/bluish-haired rough men and the most deadly enemy pilot is a blonde dude. "Konnichiwa, I am Rei Ayanami, and I'm really light skinned and look caucasian BUT I'm not liked very much (despite Japanese obsession with caucasian looks) AND my fictional self even has real-life fans who adore me precisely because I am lonely and pitiful BUT also pretty ALTHOUGH if you were pretty, you would be popular and not be lonely, and if you were lonely, you would more or less be ugly and not very attractive, so the two cannot actually go together..." Some Japanese animes try to justify the caucasian looks by presenting the characters with mixed heritage, as Chidori Kaname in Full Metal Panic!, Sumeragi Lee Noriega in Gundam 00, and Eri Sawachika in School Rumble. (But Japanese + European = nowhere close to the angelic characters in anime; they usually have pigglish Caucasian looks)

Second, I've noticecd there are characters who make repeated appearances in different animes either as clones or hybrids of favorite personalities. I already indicated above that Shinji and Shinichiro, and Toji and Miyokichi from NGE & TT are parallel characters. Also, Hiromi and Noe in TT seem to be hybrids of Rei and Asuka - Hiromi resembles Asuka physically, but her personality is closer to Rei's, and the opposite is true for Noe. Certain character looks have recurred so frequently that they are pretty much stereotypes. For example, a strong-willed Japanese woman (often older than the main protagonists) with long dark purple or blue hair and big breasts would be the anime stereotype of a modern, beautiful Japanese woman, like Itoko (School Rumble), Katsuragi (Neon Genesis Evangelion), Yurika (Nadesico), and Tamako (Denno Coil). A lot of male protagonists in animes from 1980s and 1990s used to be teenage punks with long zigzagged brown hair and little boys with black or dark blue hair. This was probably so as to avoid alienating the young Japanese male audience and to make the anime seem more racially neutral or balanced.

I think ever since Rei debuted in NGE, the silent female character has also become a permanent icon in Japanese anime. As Ive pointed out previously, this kind of persona is contradictory because girls can't be hot and unpopular at the same time. Examples of Rei clones include Primula from Shuffle! and Ruri from Nadesico. I literally worshiped Rei when I first saw NGE, but eventually I grew out of it. I hated Primula and also the entire series for being so fake (partly because of the contradiction), but I think Ruri-chan from Nadesico plays the role awesomely. Ruri's success as a silent female character has a lot to do with the fact that her persona doesn't ask for cinderalla pity, and her aloofness is self-imposed, primarily because she is a child prodigy who thinks better of herself than of the others, and she doesn't want her space and composure to be degraded by things she calls 'baka.'

(Primula on the left; Ruri on the right)

Youtube - Korean Cinderella

2009-12-03T23:40:00.002-06:00

Spencer, Spencer's mom, and Spencer's step dad made this awesome video!

I think they based it on the story provided here.

Youtube - Hot Potato - Irony

2009-12-01T02:55:00.013-06:00

(aka 뜨거운 감자 - 아이러니)

I just heard this song on youtube.

I never had much chance to listen to Korean alternative music before.

This comes with a neat animation with a style that is similar to ojingogo's.

I wonder if the same guy did the animation for this video.

The lyric in Korean came from here.

아이러니라고 하면 아이러니라고 하지
바람이 아니라면 바람이 아니라지
계절은 또 다시 또 오고 바람은 또 다시 또 불고
생각은 또 그대로이고 어른이 되면이라고 했는데
예~에~아~아~ 예~에~아~아~

사람을 알아가고 계절을 알게 되고
현실에 아파하다 옛꿈을 떠 올리고
10센치씩 멀어져가다 가끔씩은 잡힐 것 같고
멋진 나의 친구녀석은 죽을때까지 기타를 친다고

계절은 또 다시 또 오고 바람은 또 다시 또 불고
생각은 또 그대로이고 어른이 되면이라고 했는데
열 입곱과 서른 둘이 도대체 뭐가 달라진 것 같아
아파가고 꿈을 꾸고 도대체 뭐가 달라진거라고
예~아~아~아~ 예~아~아~아~

계절은 또 다시 또 오고 바람은 또 다시 또 불고
계절은 또 다시 또 오고 바람은 또 다시 또 불고
계절은 또 다시 또 오고 바람은 또 다시 또 불고

a-i-reo-ni-ra-go ha-myeon a-i-reo-ni-ra-go ha-ji

ba-ram-i a-ni-ra-myeon ba-ram-i a-ni-ra-ji

gye-jeol-eun tho da-si tho o-go ba-ram-eun tho da-si tho bul-go

sang-gak-eun tho geu-de-ro-i-go eo-reun-i dwe-myeon-i-ra-go het-neun-de

ye e a a ye e a a

sa-ram-eul al-a-ga-go gye-jeol-eul al-ge dwe-go

hyeon-sil-e a-pa-ha-da yet-c'oom-eul theo ol-li-go

sip-sen-chik myeol-eo-jyeo-ga-da ga-c'eom-ssic-eun jap-hil gut gat-go

meot-jin na-eu'ee chin-goo-nyeo-seok-eun jook-eul-the-g'a-ji gee-ta-reul chin-da-go

gye-jeol-eun tho da-si tho o-go ba-ram-eun tho da-si tho bul-go

sang-gak-eun tho geu-dae-ro-i-go eo-reun-i dwe-myeon-i-ra-go het-neun-de

yeol il-gop-gwa seo-reun dool-i do-de-che mweo-ga dal-ra-jin geot ga-ta

a-pa-ga-go c'um-eul c'u-go do-de-che mweo-ga dal-ra-jin-geo-ra-go

ye e a a ye e a a

gye-jeol-eun tho da-si tho o-go ba-ram-eun tho da-si tho bul-go

When (you/someone) say(s) it's irony, don't (I/we) say/agree it's irony

When (you/someone) say(s) it's wind (or cheating on ur partner?), don't (I/we) say/agree it's wind

Season comes again and again, and wind blows again and again, and

Thought/mind is again in that state, and although (I/we) had thought/decided that it would be when (I/we) become adult/grownup

Yeaa yeaa

Getting to know the person, and gettig to know the season, and

Hurting by the reality and then remembering an old dream/fantasy, and

Constantly getting farther apart by 10cm and then occasionally it seems like (you/it) will be caught, and

My very cool friend plays the guitar until he dies (not literally)

Season comes again and again, and wind blows again and again

Thought/mind is again in that state, and although (I/we) had thought/decided that it would be when (I/we) become adult/grownup

Between 17 and 22, exactly what seems to have changed?

Hurting and dreaming and exactly what did change

Yeaa yeaa

Season comes again and again, and wind blows again and again

Manhwa avatars (pt. 2)

2009-11-20T02:00:00.020-06:00

(See also: Manhwa avatars (pt. 1))

I was able to find more avatars while looking up materials for Lazenca.

Dooly - Thochi

Empress Chung - Empress Chung

Fly Superboard - Princess Esle/Dew

Fly Superboard - Sam-jang-bup-sa

Fly Superboard - Sa-o-jeong/jung

Fly Superboard - Son-o-gong/Son Wukong

Ghost Messenger - Fountain Gang-i/Kang-i

Ghost Messenger - Fountain Gang-i/Kang-i

Ghost Messenger - Little Kang-lim/Gang-lim

Ghost Messenger - Young Kang-lim/Gang-lim

Ghost Messenger - Maiden Bari

Ghost Messenger - Maiden Bari

Goong - Shin Chae-gyeong

Goong - Shin Chae-gyeong

Goong - Shin Chae-gyeong

Goong - Shin Chae-gyeong

Goong - Yi Shin

Hamos- Bora

Hamos - Hamos

Hamos - Mary Hunter

Hamos - Rick

Kill Me, Kiss Me - Jung Woo

Lazenca - Atin

Lazenca - Gairun

Lazenca - Gairun

Lazenca - Princess Lia

Lazenca- Zoroastro researcher

Robot Taekwon V - Taekwon V

Rolling Stars - Lucky

Run, Hanny - Hanny/Hani/Honey?

Run, Hanny - Hanny/Hani/Honey?

Shipwrecked! - Bak/Park Gyu

Shipwrecked! - Buh-jin

Shipwrecked! - Yan Kawamura

Thuruthuruthu Narong-i - Narong-i

Thuruthuruthu Narong-i - Narong-i

Wonderful Days - Karen

Wonder Kiddy 2020 - Aiken

Wonder Kiddy 2020 - Princess Yena

Yobi - Yobi

Yobi - Yobi
Yobi - Yobi

Korean & African Americans shouldn't hate each other!

2009-11-19T14:54:00.010-06:00

This is a short animation featuring Margaret Cho & Bruce Daniels that promotes better relations between Koreans and blacks.

Lol, probably the best line in the strip: "When we hate each other" "we're taking valuable time away from" "hating white people." "And we don't wanna do that. Do we?"

My understanding of the issue is that in the United States there is a large number of Korean Americans who are racist against blacks, but I also heard that Koreans are the most likely Asian ethnicity to marry an African American. On the other hand, South Koreans are definitely racist against foreigners of darker skin color, and in reverse they generally lust for whiter skin. I see why this may be the case, but I just think that they're wrong & misguided.

Korean animation and manhwa are reflective of this racist mindset. As I've said before, Koreans should stop depicting Asian characters with Caucasian looks. (And they look different from the real thing) I've observed before that the main characters in Japanese and Korean animes tend to be lighter-skinned than the side characters & antagonists. There is no need for that... Take a look at Nadia, for example. It's one of my most favorite childhood animes. There are 2 characters who look Southeast Asian - Nadia and Captain Nemo - and the only blond lady in the series has a very dark tan.

Daum tv팟 - opening song of Lazenca - To Boy From Sun

2009-11-18T20:32:00.027-06:00

Just a couple of things to note about Lazenca..

The title of the opening song, "해에게서 소년에게," is probably a reference to an older song that was composed in 1908 during the Joseon Dynasty.

The lyrics' contents are completely different though. Here's the lyric for the opening song from Sengoku's site:

눈을 감으면 태양의 저편에서
들려오는 멜로디 내게 속삭이지 이제 그만 일어나 어른이 될 시간이야
너 자신을 시험해봐 길을 떠나야해 니가 흘린 눈물이 마법의 주문이 되어
너의 여린 마음을 자라나게 할꺼야 남들이 뭐래도 니가 믿는 것 들은
포기하려하거나 움츠려 들지마 힘이 들 땐 절대 뒤를 돌아보지마 앞만 보며 날아가야해
너의 꿈을 비웃는자는 애써 상대하지마
변명하려 입을 열지마 그저 웃어 버리는거야
아직 시간이 남아있어 너의 날개는 펴질꺼야
Now we flying to the univers 마음이끄는곳 높은곳으로 날아가 절대 뒤를 돌아보지마 앞만 보며 날아가야해
너의 꿈을 비웃는자는 애써 상대하지마
변명하려 입을 열지마 그저 웃어 버리는거야
아직 시간이 남아있어 너의 날개는 펴질꺼야

더 높이 더 멀리 너의 꿈을 찾아 날아라 소년아 저 모든 별들은 너보다 먼저 떠난 사람들이 흘린 눈물이란다. 세상을 알게된 두려움에 흘린 저 눈물이 이다음에 올 사람들을 인도하고 있는것이지

When you close your eyes, from the sun’s direction
I hear a melody whispered

Now it’s time to wake up and become a grownup
You must set out on a journey to prove yourself

The tears that you’ve shed will become magical spells
Which will make your innocent mind grow

No matter what others say, your beliefs -
Do not give them up or try to hide them… when it gets hard

Never look back; always look and go forward
Do not face those who mock your dreams
Do not open your mouth; just smile away
For now there is time; you will spread your wings.

Now we flying to the universe
We will fly to the high place that our hearts cling to

Never look back; always look and go forward
Do not face those who mock your dreams
Do not open your mouth; just smile away
For now there is time; you will spread your wings.

Lad, all those stars are…. by those who have departed before you
The tears that were shed. The fear that comes with understanding the world…. that was shed
That tear will guide the next person who will take on the journey.

I think that the Gairun mech's head was meant to resemble a Joseon-dynasty Korean helmet. It's like how the original Gundam (RX-78 Gundam)'s head has the V antennae of a Samurai's helmet.

As you can see, the Korean helmet has a poll that goes up from the tip of the helmet to the red tassle at the top. The Gairun mech also has gold dragon symbols that are typical of the Chinese and Korean armors from 15th ~ 19th century.

More pics:

(tracing with pencil, not by me)

(Toonivers is a cable channel in Korea dedicated to anime.)What I don't really get is why there was a shift in preference from alternative rock during the late 1990s to female bubblegum pop for the opening and ending songs by the early 2000s. Hamos also had a pretty decent alt. rock song. I just can't stand stuffs I hear in animes nowadays.

Dooly The Movie a.k.a. 아기공룡 둘리 (1996)

2009-11-16T13:19:00.012-06:00

More than a year ago, The Little Dinosaur Dooly was uploaded onto youtube. I watched it long time ago when I was very young, like 5~ 6 years old, and I was able to watch it again few months ago. Surprisingly I really enjoyed it even though it's meant for a much younger audience. As I understand it, Koreans consider Dooly as the iconic symbol of Korean animation like Pikachu and Gundam.

You can find out more about it here.

3:51 - "I'll be late again... Hey what's this?!? Eh? Huh!"

4:01 - "KDS (referring to Korean Broadcasting System) Necessary & Immediate News: Antarctic iceberg entered the Han River. It's completely pollution-free ice!"

4:10 - "Pollution-free?!?" "Pollution-free?!?" (Koreans used to be obsessed with this kind of stuff during the late 80s & 90s)

4:23 - "The Ice has been quickly reduced to a skeleton... Does ice have bones too?" (funny statement of the obvious)

4:42 - "Ahh? Big brother, take a look at that!" "What..." "There's an abandoned doll on the riverbank." "Big brother, I want to have it." "Aii.. It's dirty." "We can clean it up. (I think students back then were taught by their school teachers to value & keep their toys for as long as possible in conduct & ethics class.) Please pick up up! Quickly!" "Gosh. It's quite heavy as it seems to have been soaked in water."

5:21 - "Go Gil-dong (Dad's name.)"

5:37 - "Wife, I came home.... Oh wait, she's away at her relatives'. Oh god. It's hot. It's hot. Let's see if there's a cool beer. Eh? Ok, at least this will do."

6:04 - "Mmm... Wow it's cold. Mmm.... Wow it's delicious. I had closed this (fridge door.) before... AHHHH!"

6:40 - "Dad! What's wrong?" "Ah jaja over there!"

6:56 - "Big brother, that's the doll that we picked up at the bank of a stream." "Yea you're right. Seems like it's not a doll."
7:00 - "It's a dino dino dino dino! You better leave immediately!? Hyee-dong, it's dangerous! Move aside! Hyee-dong, it's dangerous! Hyee-dong, NO!"

7:30 - "NOOOO! You think dumb kids like you can keep an animal that looks like a dino? Absolutely not." "Dad, but it's cute!" "Cute? You ugly one!" "Dad! Please allow us!"

7:51 - "Nonono. You might catch a disease." "Then it just needs to get a shot." "Is shot free?" "DAD!" "NO!" "DAD!" NO!" "DAD!" "NO!"

8:12 - "No! Yes! Yes!" "Yay, he says 'yes'!" "Yes!" "Yes!" "Yes! Yes!"

8:22 - "Big brother (It's like 'onii-chan' in Japanese. It's used by a younger sister to refer to an older brother or, more recently, her boyfriend.), what should we call him?" "Well, Grandeur Gundam Vegitta..." "Stop joking." "What about 'Happy' or 'Ori'?" "Pffs. You think this is a dog?

8:34 - "Heh, Dooly." "Dooly?" "Ohh, Dooly?" "Wow, you can talk!" "Huhh, mom! Mom! Mom!" "So it's a dino?" "Ehhh hey no way! What kind of dino is this small?" "It must be a cat!"

8:58 - "My wife isn't coming back soon from her relatives & she's looking after a luckless old man. Wow what's that noise? God, what an annoying one."

9:17 - "All right. Let's eat. Where's my spoon?"

0:17 - "Look at that!"

0:21 - "Come here!" "Let's watch TV"
0:27 - "You dirty one... What is all this? Without spilling all over the place, please eat quickly."

0:35 - "You can do as you please." "You young little one!"

0:50 - "Well then, what's this?" "Tail." "Well this is great! We'll trash it."

1:17 - "Please go home and live well, amen!" "You seem to be very happy." "Yes I am. That little bastard.... our home... Oii!!!" "Please close/raise your chin, your inside shows."
1:45 - "The little bastard wants to joke with me." "Wipe off your sweats with this." "Thank you."

2:48 - "You came back home?"

2:48 - "How can I drive out that bastard...? Poke him in the butt? Or put this-sized stone into his rice..."

3:17 - "No! No! No! ..... Ahhhh! No! No!"
3:40 - "It's yours, sir." "You spray on my rice!?!" "But I caught the fly." "But what about my rice, my rice, my rice, rice!!" "Ok... ok... If I cook it's fine." "What can you do?! What can you do!? What! ... All right. You better do it right!"

5:46 - "Water please." "It's in the refrigerator..." "Water!" "Does he not have a hand or feet? Does being an adult mean everything? God. Here!"

6:06 - "The loser (in rock-paper-scissor) gets to do the dish washing." "Since you made the food, you should finish it up."

6:15 - "If I had committed a sin, it's that I don't have money, I don't have a home, and I have nowhere to go."

6:40 - "Why spray on the rice that one eats?"
6:48 - "Wow it's an Archaeopteryx! Archaeopteryx!" "Why this ghost-bird forgetting noise?!" "You're not an Archaeopteryx?" "This body is .... that escaped the circus.. No, no, no, an ostrich from Africa, Thoch!" "Is digging into garbage a queenly thing?" "I didn't!" "Are you hungry?" "I didn't!"

7:10 - "There's no rice, but I will get you some ramen noodle, so please wait."
7:30 - "It's a large bird! A large one!" "Ahhhg! How can you touch a woman's butt without caution?"

7:46 - "God, this misbehaving one! I've got to fix his ways!"

8:24 - "What is this? Why did a large chicken come inside? .... And why did you come in again?" "Hehehe, she's my friend. Please greet him, it's our mister." "How are you doing, I'm Thoch."

8:36 - "So what?" "Don't mind him, he's usually like that." "What! Animals in front of me! What are you? You want to take beatings in place of your friend? Get the hell out!"

8:53- "Dad is there something wrong?" "Sis, mister (your dad) only dislikes me. I didn't do anything wrong!"

0:02 - "That little wretch!" "It's a huge illness to hit little children. Sir, you will die sick because you abuse little children." "What?!?" "If you die, ho ho I'll have to take your house."

0:20 - "Didn't I tell you... that his temper is dirty. He can't understand any joke." "He's so scary, bud." "Get lost!"
0:38 - "It's all right. It's all right. We can just go back when he's asleep. You'll stay with me until I can go back?" "Sure." "Thanks a lot." "It's not a big deal."

0:60 - "Where's your house?" "I don't have one." "You don't? Why?" "Because I was in a circus group." "Circus?" "Mhm. Wouldn't I be the bird star/new star at Las Vegas?"

3:14 - "Wow then you'll be able to do tricks very well!" "Of course!" "Spinning dishes, acrobatics, jumping through flame wheel, etc." "Wow! So I am with a really great person!" "Should I demonstrate?" "Yes yes please."

3:38 - "The most important thing with Acrobatics is throwing and catching well." "Wow!" "You should try it. It's not that a big deal." "Would I be able to do it as well?" "Self-confidence is important. Focus!" "Focus?" "Start!" "Start."
4:00 - "It's working, it's working it's working, it's working! How is it?" "Huhh... He's doing this that took me a whole year in just one try! .... eh hem. What did I tell you? That you could do it! But anyone can do that much. It's beginner's skill. You should do at least this much."

4:30 - "Waaah aha! I wanna do it too!" "xxx xxx! Those people make a good person into a bad one, really!"

5:00 - "There are a lot of stars.. How happy would the people living in those far-away stars' lands be?" "Who lives there?" "No one lives there?" "They say if you look from up close it's just a lump of fire." "It's a falling star! falling star! How unlucky would be someone who gets hit by a falling star?" "It falls again there." "It would be nice to get hit by something other than a falling star."

5:39 - "It seems like the mister's house.. The falling star must have heeded to our wishes!" "Humph! He's just sleeping very well."

6:00 - "Let's save a person!" "Uggh, bean paste smell!" "This guy seems like the 'falling star'."

6:20 - "Gosh! It still smells. What star is this?" "Ours is called 'Earth'..." "Ahhh, 'Earth' star!" "You look very strange." "From my perspective, you guys all look very queer. Do earth star people all look like you?" "That might be the case." "Big brother... pee (?)" "This is animal-that-does-what?" "Hwee Dong-hee." "Dog Dong-ee?" "Hwee Dong-hee!" "Ohh, Dog Dong-ee? Can I eat it? That is much more vicious than it looks! Why are you like that?"

7:04 - "Hahaha! What's your name?" "Doner/Donald. I currently reside at K'an-thak star tens of thousands of light years away." "K'an-thak star?" "Yes. Because the time cosmos broke down i fell down to this place."

7:21 - "Time cosmos? What is that" "You don't even have time cosmos? You're very ignorant! Time cosmos is a machine that lets you travel to space in the past and the future." "Aha! Time machine?" "You at least know time machine? In our star time machine is old stuff." "Does time machine thing really exist?"

7:43 - Well, I told you time machine is old stuff!" "Time cosmos... Oh no! Gae-dong-ee destroyed the time cosmos! It's a very rude animal! I don't know what to do. I really don't know!"

8:07 - "We're going to wake him up! We're going to wake him up!" "Nobody's hurt? Neighborhood people!" "Wait. What is this? Hey you why did you come to our house again?" "Sir, sir, your underwear, your underwear." "You could eat this properly since it's fully grown." "Hehe, he's my friend, Doner/Donald." "What? Friend again?" "

8:35- "Hurry and greet him." "What is that?" "It's our mister." "What is that?" "That is... well... living together with us at the house...." "Ohh! Pet!" "You can think like you want. Quickly greet him!" "Do you greet a pet on earth?" "Just greet him!" "How-dy-doo-dy. How-dy-doo-dy!"

9:11- "Your pets are like that?" "No. He's only like that when I'm eating and when I've brought a friend." "Strange. Why can't you do anything to a pet on earth?" "It didn't get proper education, that's why." "Fine let me teach him a lesson/fix his behavior!"

9:52- "That thing came in again?" "What's his name?" "Gil-dong! Gil-dong!" "Hey gil-dong, bite this! Bite this!"

Webtoon: Welcome to Convenience Store ep 1

2009-11-15T23:26:00.013-06:00

Umm so long time no see. This is a 2~3 min long webtoon about a convenience store (a.k.a. "supermarket" in Konglish). It's like the producers ran out of good ideas so they decided to inspire kids to become store keepers. (They recently did a program about a Korean-Eastern European couple who supposedly live happily together running a convenience store...)

I've tried to translate it (post edit - nvm don't watch it, it's terrible):

(it starts out with a typical cheesy anime-ish song)

0:21 - "Wara Family" (Wara / 와라 means "come" ?)

0:55 - "딸랑이는 종소리와 어서오세요 즐거운 인사" (Jingling bell sound & friendly greeting)

1:00 - "잠시 쉬어가셔도 좋아요 없는게 없는 당신의 쉼터" (It's okay for you to stay and rest for a bit .... your rest place that lacks any lacking)

1:09 - "안녕하세요 무얼찾고있나요" (Hello what are you looking for?)

1:12 - "망설이지 말고 제게 말해봐요" (Tell me without hestitating)

1:16 - "언제나 어디서나 함께하는" (Anytime anywhere together)

1:22 - "하루가 담긴 여러분의 편의점" (Containing the day's episodes... everyone's convenience store)

1:27 - "피곤한 아침에도 고단한 저녁에도" (On lazy mornings and tiring evenings)

1:33 - "당신을 위해 always with you" (Always with you for you ....)

1:46 - "1화 신분증... 미성년자는 안돼요" (Ep. 1 Identification. Minors Not Allowed)

1:54 - RADIO: "그래서 이번엘범은 좀 성숙한 분이기로 드러왔습니다." (So this time the album came with some mature look) - not sure if this is right

1:56 - RADIO: "네, 이번엘범 title 제목이?" (Ok. This album's title is..?)

1:99 - RADIO: "오빠앞에서 짝짝공이라고 하는건데요." (It's called 'In front of your boyfriend .... tight') ???

2:02 - RADIO: "아... 오빠앞에서 짝짝공이요? 네... 참 더렆게 성숙하네요." (Oh, " " " " " " " " " " " " ? Yeah sure, it sounds inappropriate/dirty)

2:11 - RADIO: "그런데 xxx 소녀가 오빠의 마음을 사로잡기 위헤 애쓴다면..." (So, if an xxx girl tries real hard to capture the boyfriend's/ your mind...)

2:30 - "헤... 허 어서오세요." (Eh, heh! Come on in)

2:41 - "...일한갑 주세요." (A pack of cigarette please)

2:47 - "허... 생긴거는 아루리 봐도 봐도 고등인데... 아버지 심부른인가?" (Gasp. By appearance he's undeniably a high school student... Is it an errand for his father?)

2:49 - "아 저 손님, 실으지만, 신분증좀 보여주시겠서요? (Excuse me Mr. Customer, but could you show me your identification?"

2:51 - "아 저 신분증이요?" (Ah my ID?)

2:53 - "죄송합니다만, 너무 어려보여서요." (I'm sorry, it's because you look so young/immature.)

2:57 - "아 궨찬해요. 제가 오낙 동안이라 그런 오해를 자주 받거든요. 하 하. 여기요." (Oh it's okay. I get misunderstood like that all the time. Here.)

3:08 - "내가 오해를 했구나. 궨히 미얀해지내." (I apparently misunderstood. I feel sorry now.)

3:16 - "어.. 어........ 손님... 맞일레요?" (Uh...........huh! Mr. Customer, do you wanna get beat up?)

3:33 - "사진 가리면 ............녀석 ............" (If you cover the photo, .................) - can't understand the last part

3:48 - "형 신분증이라고?" (It's your brother's ID?)

3:51 - "예..." (Yes mam)

3:52 - "애인이냐?" (Is he a grownup/etc...?)

3:54 - "당현이죠." (Of cou ..... rse not.)

4:17 - "엔딩 후에도 뭔가 있슬텐대.. 보기실으면 말던가...." (There should be something after ending... If you don't want to look, don't.)

(Wow it's got an ending song too.... the songs are like 3 min out of a 6 min video... Well, I didn't get anything out of the 1st episode.)

better than anime

2009-09-25T11:41:00.002-05:00

I haven't been able to find a good anime or manhwa for a while now, but I found these rlly funny videos:

Old news about Kim Yuna

2009-06-25T23:29:00.006-05:00

Gusts Of Popular Feeling: A comic take on Kim Yu-na

For those who haven't read that blog post, I think it's worth while for me to talk about.

Compare the manhwa illustration of Kim Yuna to her real-life photo:

The manhwa version doesn't come close to looking the real Kim! How can the artist justify Kim's green eyes, brown hair, and a Caucasian nose? Indeed such features would better suit the tastes of the average manga/manhwa fans, although a comic like this would be read mostly by kids who will only become confused by this inaccurate depiction of her race. The drawing just looks really annoying to me.

2 drawings i did long ago (mecha musume)

2009-05-31T07:12:00.003-05:00

Dassault Rafale

I posted it @ animepaper & got various responses, & I liked jenny713's the most:

The machine parts are pretty cool. think you need some more work on anatomy though. also work on detailing the facial area. the nose and mouth area should be more distinct. hair could be a little bit more detailed. the eyes look pretty good. maybe just add in pupils and little shine would make it better. the arms seem too long and too skinny. the main problem on the body is the shoulder to chest area. the neck seems too long, but maybe that's because the shoulders are misplaced.

F-18 Hornet

They look pretty good on paper, but when I tried to vector them on the computer they became much worse. Would buying a tablet help (I currently vector using a mouse)?

Review of 'Moon Boy' Volume 1

2009-05-29T23:54:00.023-05:00

(In Korean: 월요일 소년)

Myung-ee Joo's story begins from around the time when she is in 5th grade. Her passion is handsome mature men; she has a pretty boy picture collection & more impressively blogs about the male sex. Apparently Myung-ee just transferred to a new school; she meets the class president, Yu-da Lee (i.e. Eee; Lee is Chinese spelling), for the first time when she accidentally pushes him over on the way to school. Yu-da is a very popular boy, but some kids avoid him because he does not have mom and dad.

On the way back home, Myung-ee is revealed by Yu-da that they are similar in some ways. For one thing, their eyes turn red and become itchy at night. Soon they reach Yu-da's home, where Yuda's grandfather greets them. Myung-ee turns away in shock when the old man makes some mean jokes about her looks, and she bumps into a tall and handsome 10th grade guy by name of Ryu (Japanese name?). He is supposedly the most popular guy in a nearby high school, and strangely he offers to go out with Myung-ee the next day.

To her disappointment, Ryu does not come to pick her up after school. Ryu is in fact a fox (what?) who likes to eat the livers (what?!?) of rabbits (what!?!) from the moon (...the fox should also like other things i.e. insects), which would include Myung-ee and Yuda. Luckily for Myung-ee, Ryu is severely wounded or killed by a female humanoid rabbit (humanoid rob.. robo... robot) while attempting to eat Yuda.

Yuda then recovers a forgotten memory of how his parents died. He cries and collapses.

The story fast-forwards to Myeong-ee's transfer to a high school in 10th grade. She is still obsessed with handsome boys, as expected, and she takes pictures of them with her camera phone.
Myeong-ee also learns that Yu-da attends this school, and he is the class secretary and a member of the student council. Although Myeong-ee seems to want to dislike Yu-da, she admits that he is kind of cute and takes picture of him along with the other student council members. When she tries to approach him, however, Yu-da says he does not know her or even the elementary school that they had gone together with. This surprises and angers Myeong-ee because she thinks that Yu-da is trying to ignore her, but she eventually realizes that Yu-da is being honest with her.

That night Myeong-ee is visited (or rather attacked) by Sae-eun Won, who is one of the student council members. Luckily another rabbit wearing a mask of Robot Taekwon V comes to her rescue. The "fox" flees, and Myeong-ee presses Mr. Tae-kwon V to explain to her about the deal with rabbits being food for the foxes, etc. So basically, rabbits used to live on the moon long ago, but when they were invaded by the foxes they had to flee to Earth. The foxes followed them to Earth, and so the rabbits formed the "Soon-la Army" to counter the foxes (...y didn't they do that on the moon to begin with?). 2 of the 3 members of the student council (Jin-soo Jung and Sae-eun Won) are foxes, but Yu-da is a rabbit. The foxes let Yu-da leave because he is a special type - a black rabbit. They erased his memory and is protecting him until he is a full-grown adult, so that their queen, Hang-ah, can regain her powers that she had lost after drinking an elixir of immortality. Sae-eun is always around Yu-da as a watch guard but pretends to be Yu-da's best friend.

The next day Myeong-ee is bullied by some girls for having been a bit too emotional around Yu-da the day before. They take away her underwear and post it on a bulletin in a hallway. Yu-da makes them hand over the underwear to him so that he can return it to Myeong-ee and puts it in a bag. When Myeong-ee sees Sae-eun standing near Yu-da, she calls Sae-eun a "dog" and a "shaggy," and tells him to get lost. In response, Sae-eun takes out the panty and teases her about its strawberry patterns, causing Myeong-ee to lash out at him in tears. Yu-da holds her back and apologizes for his "friend," saying that Sae-eun does not mean to hurt her.

Meanwhile, Sae-eun is engaged in a fight with another boy, whose voice Myeong-ee recognizes to be Mr. Tae-kwon V's. The fight is interrupted when a strong wind reveals Myeong-ee's bottom naked; Mr. Tae-kwon V starts crying and apologizes, "I'm sorry! .... I saw your bumbum."

Visual quality: 8/10
General plot: 6.5/10
Comedy elements: 6/7
Action elements: 3/4
Mystery elements: 2/2
Otaku elements: 5.5/6
Realness: 2/4

Overall: (7.7/10)

2 drawings i did recently (cat & mouse)

2009-05-28T09:25:00.006-05:00

sry I couldn't blog for a while (2 months). I'll have plenty of time to blog during the summer now.

the mouse, my favorite

the cat (i.e. neko-mimi) wants to eat u

I could try to turn these into vectors on the computer, but I really don't want to fry my brain & it always turns out that vectors look very different (--> worse) from the pencil drawing.

The main reason why I didn't blog at all recently is that I'm currently working on a small-length amateur comic (with pencils) & I've been trying to draw people more realistically (i.e. Asians don't have pointy small nose) while also pursuing the same level of cuteness or beauty of the simplified anime characters. I'd describe the style as counter-anime & so far it's been really hard to draw.

Review of 'The Flower of Evil' Volume 4

2009-03-15T11:14:00.008-05:00

(In Korean: 악의 꽃)

(SPOILERS)

Continuing on Seh-wa’s new friendship with Sung-chan (who I found out is rlly cauled Sung-joon/성준), volume 4 starts off with them going over to Sung-chan’s house at night. Sung-chan’s uncle is quiet taken aback by the sight of Seh-wa (not because she’s pretty, or maybe so -_- ) because having just the girl over by herself late at night is strictly contrary to Confucian morals (and pretty much every other ethical standards). Seh-wa actually wants a sleep-over (she’s ridiculously daring in a cute way, like Danbi in Love SOS), but I’m not sure to what extent Seh-wa is expecting that she’d be able to do that.

Fortunately or unfortunately (it'd have been more interesting), she leaves the house when she finds photos of her & her brother in one of Sung-chan's collections. Seh-wa goes home on a taxi, only to get a call from Sung-chan that he's waiting outside the her house. He waits there until the next morning & follows Seh-wa to school & on the way he tries to explain that he has taken pics of her & her brother b/c he simply likes them a lot. How she responds is funny:

On her way back to school, Seh-wa is attacked by a group of girls for being liked by Sung-chan. They leave her having cut her hair & her fingers up with a knife (she doesn't lose her fingers though, but still it's a sight). Seh-wa calls Sung-chan for help, and when he finds her sitting in the alley, he tries to take her to a hospital, but interestingly she begs him to take her to a hair salon first. Of course, Sung-chan takes her to the hospital before the hair salon. The chapter (13) ends with a really interesting scene that I won't spoil in this review.

After accompanying Seh-wa home, Sung-chan meets his previous girlfriend, Choi (or Chwae) Soo-jin b/c he suspects that she is mainly responsible for the cruelty. When she admits having hurt Seh-wa, Sung-chan basically threatens Soo=jin so she won't go near Seh-wa again. Personally, I don't think Sung-chan sounds threatening enough even for a girl, but Soo-jin does get really scared as willed by the manhwaga (i.e. manhwa artist).

Chapter 14 ends w/ Sung-chan getting rlly frustrated while conversing with Seh-wa about what she says at end of Chapter 13. He goes to a PC cafe (i.e. PC bang, "a" as in "bah") & plays a computer game that might be starcraft.

Visual quality: 10/11
General plot: 8/10
Comedy elements: 3/4
Action elements: 2.5/3
Romance elements: 3/4
Mystery elements: 1/1
Sophistication: 5/6
Realness: 5/6

Overall: (8.3/10)

My favorite anime wallpapers

2009-03-08T22:32:00.030-05:00

3 Laws of anime wallpapers:

1) Most anime wallpapers r crappy.
2) Finding good wallpapers is time consuming.
3) The ones said to be the best (i.e. animepaper.net's featured gallery) r not necessarily great:

***Actually, I'm finding rlly good wallpapers more easily now... I couldn't find them before, so they must be recent submissions. There might not even be a need for this list then...

1st manhwa artist

2009-03-07T09:20:00.005-06:00

(source: Janimes)

Yi Do-yeong (이도영) (1884-1933) "[expressed]... his ideas in... form of manhwa through ... [a] popular daily newspaper [(Dehanminbo, 대한민보)]... [in] 1909." He was mostly known for opposing Japan's colonization of Korea through his works.

I know there are some very bizarre myths out there about pretty much anything (i.e. Kiss My Kimchi!: Coreans are Caucasians???). Well, ppl, if u were assuming manhwa came from Japanese manga, now u know it didnt!

Watch more Tagstory videos on AOL Video

Kiss My Kimchi!: SICAF!

2009-03-06T17:33:00.001-06:00

Kiss My Kimchi!: SICAF!

This was like... 2008/05/30

Seoul International Cartoon Animation Festival

Youtube - the birth of doggy poo

2009-03-02T19:37:00.004-06:00

Doggy Poo, the greatest that ever was. Very funny. It's a stop motion Korean animation.

Brian in Jeollanam-do: "You are a doggy poo."

Koreans are obsessed with poop and rear ends, everyone knows that. Give ten of your students a wad of clay and eleven of them will make an poop swirley cone. Not sure why you'd go around giving out clay, but whatever, poop is in the news again after a local newspaper broke it down by nationality, and created a nice illustration to show which people poop the most.

Youtube - (Korean Anime) 2009 NEW DOOLY OP

2009-03-02T19:10:00.003-06:00

I found this youtube link here. The comments there were quite positive.

The opening song is okay. I think it sounds a bit like JPop/Anime-ish. I remember watching Dooly when I was little. It'd be on TV every Korean New Year (Seollal). There was also an English learning video set for kids that I remember watching in my friend's apartment. I really enjoyed it all. I worry that the producers will milk it & ruin it b/c they usualy do to major titles (i.e. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Pokemon, Digimon, etc.).

Counter Strike Source spray

2009-03-02T17:01:00.001-06:00

This is a spray I made for Counter Strike: Source. : ) I hope to make a wallpaper as something similar. The scene's from Goong.

This is my forum signature.

Anime ranking rating

2009-02-22T10:17:00.021-06:00

Here I'm going to try to rank all the anime's that I've seen in the past b/c I've got nothing better to do & I don't want to forget the anime's that I've seen & I'm also dissatisfied with some of the anime reviews (i.e. Mania's review of Code Geass, which was terrible but they gave it an A) which are completely off & sound like a biased promo jumbo...

I hope that the following "best/worst anime" list will be helpful to those who are trying to find good animated movies/series to enjoy but are afraid that they'll waste time watching something crappy.

5/5 stars

Elfen Lied
Full Metal Panic! TSR
Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae
Millenium Actress
Paprika
Pokemon
Samurai Champloo
Samurai Harem

4/5 stars

5 cm per second
Anpanman
The Big O
Death Note
Dooly the Little Dino
Evangelion: 1.0
Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu
Galaxy Express 999
Howl's Moving Castle
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Inuyasha
Kare Kano
Mulan
Paranoia Agent
The Prince of Egypt
Nadesico
Nadia the Secret of Blue Water
School Rumble
School Rumble Ni gakki
Sekirei
Spirited Away
Suzumiya Haruhi
True Tears
Welcome to NHK!
Yobi the Five Tailed Fox

3/5 stars

Air
Appleseed Ex Machina
Azumanga Daioh
Ayakashi
Cardcaptor Sakura
Denno Coil
The End of Evangelion
Digimon Adventure
Dragonball
Eureka seveN
Evangelion: 2.0
Full Metal Panic!
Ghost in the Shell
Gundam Seed
Hamos
Kodomo no omocha
Laputa, Castle in the Sky
Let's & Go!
Lovely Complex
Medabot
Mobile Suit Gundam
Nana 707
Oseam
The Place Promised in Our Early Days
Restol
Rumbling Hearts
Sailor Moon
School Days
Sora No Otoshimono
Spice & Wolf
Summer Wars
Wagaya no Oinari-sama
Wonderful Days

2/5 stars

Astro Boy
Clannad
Dragonball Z
Dragonball GT
Futakoi Alternative
Gundam 00
Gundam Seed Destiny
Gundam Wing
Gurren Lagann
Kara no kyokai: Overlooking View
Key the metal idol
Kimba the White Lion
Nausicaa the Valley of the Wind
Tenchi Muyo
Saikano
Steamboy
Strike Witches
Toaru Kagaku no Railgun
Yu-gi-oh!
Zeta Gundam

1/5 stars

Chobits
Gundam 00 S2
Inukami!
Love Hina
Manabi Straight!
Negima
Onegai Teacher
Seto no Hanayome
Shining Tears X Wind
Shuffle!
Stratos 4
Strawberry Panic
Tokimeki Memorial
Tonagura
Venus Versus Virus

Unrated

Bleach
Cowboy Bebop
Eden of the East
My Neighbor Totoro
Naruto
Nodame Cantabile
One Piece
Patlabor
Shakugan No Shana
Sky Girls
Tokyo Godfathers
Witch Hunter Robin

Review of 'The Flower of Evil' Volume 3

2009-02-16T08:28:00.003-06:00

(In Korean: 악의 꽃)

(SPOILERS)

Reading this volume made me wonder if the scanlators were too thorough in their cleanups of Vol. 1 & 2 scans because the scanlation of Volume 3 is filled in more & looks much nicer.

(I like how this scene here. It's how Corea feels like at night)

(I like how Seh-wa's drawn on the right - a cute curious face)

I love all the patterns & details that were in the drawing. People at soompi said The Flower of Evil was beautifully drawn, but I didn't really get what they meant until I read this volume.

(Probably this page was colored in by the scanlators. Very nicely : ) )

Meat Street
Originally uploaded by sharilynanderson

So, the story goes like this. Seh-wa asks Seh-joon to demonstrate his love for her by killing himself, so Seh-joon gets in front of a car speeding down the road and is hospitalized. (Interesting plot, but still -1 for realness) Seh-wa feels so terrible for what she's done that she promises to never bother Seh-joon again. When Seh-joon recovers, his girlfriend Shi-yeun (who I think is older than Seh-joon b/c he addresses her as "sunbae," the Korean equivalent of "sempai" in Japanese; Seh-wa, who should be of same age as Seh-joon, refers to her as "unni," literally meaning "older sister.") comes home with Seh-joon & enjoys spending time with him. She visits few times more (like 1 more, I don't quite remember), and this makes Seh-wa mad. She breaks everything in her room and leaves home, planning to tire herself out by wandering in the streets. She's followed by Sung-chan, who walked home with Seh-wa from school and was waiting outside hoping that she'd get come out again because of Shi-yeun. Seh-wa wants to get rid of him, but she can't and eventually tires herself out. Eventually he baits her into a fast food place (like Lotte or McDonald's), & when she falls asleep he calls Seh-joon to pick her up. The next day, Seh-wa draws a lot of attention by walking out of a window on third floor & when Sung-chan comes to the scene she jumps on him, injuring his arm... (Again, very interesting, but still -1 for realness)

Anyhow, Yi Hyunsoo did a much better job overall with volume 3. She made Seh-wa more likable; her personality is very cute in a teasing way.

P.S. I found out Seh-joon & Seh-wa's last name - "Eun," (은) like "en" in "gotten."

Visual quality: 10/11
General plot: 8/10
Comedy elements: 2.5/3
Action elements: 2.5/3
Romance elements: 3/4
Mystery elements: 2/2
Sophistication: 5/6
Realness: 4/6

Overall: (8.2/10)

Download @ mangatraders

Review of 'The Flower of Evil' Volume 2

2009-02-13T20:17:00.006-06:00

(In Korean: 악의 꽃)

(SPOILERS)

The second volume of The Flower of Evil continues the interesting story (i.e. differently new, because of its incestuous theme) with much stronger drama. Having established certain unusual points with the readers in the first volume (or else we would have been confused), the manhwaga is free to develop the personalities and the plot more aggressively here.

A rumor about Seh-wa and Seh-joon kissing each other spreads in school, but Seh-wa is nonchalant and persistent in loving her brother. In fact I think the crisis only heightens the drama as Seh-wa speaks more eloquently to defend her right to love him:

As you can see, it's not the same kind of wine brewing from the last book. The drawing style hasn't changed, but it's strange how just the words can make so much difference in a comic.

About the drawing quality... I gave it 9/10 like last time. For comparison, I usually gave Goong 12/12, LOVE SOS 7.5/10, and Metal Heart 8.5/10. I admire how the characters are drawn realistically as the ones in Goong, but I don't like how the pages aren't filled with enough details and shading as in Goong and Metal Heart.

Seh-joon gets "filthy" with his girlfriend (I forgot her name), but the scenes were covered and brief, barely enough for us to get the point.

I thought this scene here was pretty accurate with how Korean high schools look & "feel" (heh, wrong grammar) like in a usual, late afternoon:

Yi Hyunsook (the manhwaga, a female I assume) introduced several new people but didn't build on them (I remember making a similar observation regarding one of the LOVE SOS volumes). Sung-chan is shown living with his uncle in the 1st chapter, but the uncle doesn't appear afterward (except maybe once more in the last chapter - was that the uncle?). The girl dressed like "whore" (from Vol. 1) who's interested in Sung-chan (who used to be called Gi-hoon) appears like just once here. So far, they were just space fillers that left me expecting something but not getting anything and feeling disconnected.

Although romance should be a major part of the story, it's not. There's just a lot of negative energy (i.e. jealousy) but not much constructive stuff to build on the relationships.

I didn't get what was funny with the author's note at the end of the manhwa here:

Visual quality: 9/10
General plot: 7.5/10
Comedy elements: 2/3
Action elements: 2/4
Romance elements: 3/5
Mystery elements: 2/3
Sophistication: 3.5/5
Realness: 4/6

Overall: (7.2/10)

Download @ mangatraders

the star online: "Cute but dangerous?"

2009-02-04T18:21:00.001-06:00

Malaysia's the star online reports about the cancellation of an anime adaptation of a Japanese manga, Hetalia.

"As soon as the adaptation of the manga into an animation was announced, a number of South Korean Internet users strongly called for the cancellation of the broadcast, as they felt the South Korean character insults their country. South Korea is depicted as a man who 'is weak before the United States, calls China his elder brother, and hates Japan'."

I actually wouldn't mind S. Korea being portrayed negatively as long as it's accurate. When did S. Korea ever call China an elder brother? Shouldn't that be North Korea? Also, I think "hates Japan" is other way around. Koreans may dislike Japan as a country for trying to conceal its holocaust past, but they don't have to waste their time "hating Japan." If the argument goes, "hey Japan, you used to be criminal," and the reply is "no" or "yes, but let's forget about it," still those war crimes and oppressive acts committed by the Japanese government during colonial rule are Japanese' problem, not Koreans'.

---------------
PS

I found a good discussion at a blog called Anime Might:

"Please excuse me a little bit for leaving you a comment like this.
(Also, my English is not perfect, but I will try my best.)

Actually…I was keeping on watching its progress so far.
How the anime was cancled, and how the Hetalia fans are reacting…kind of thing.

In order to understand the actions taken by (around ten thousands of) Koreans,
people should understand what their real complains are.
They simply have two major points.
1. No more WWII glorification
2. No more distorted Korean character
and there are a lot of ‘detailed’ complains related to it.

For example, many Koreans were offended when Korea in Hetalia was obsessed with Japanese flags.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sohn_Kee-chung
Maybe this article can help you understand how Koreans would feel if Korean in Hetalia acts like that.

Koreans were already offended by several “anti-Korean” mangas like this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manga_Kenkanryu
No Koreans signed up to protest about it at this point.
(I saw several Koreans saying “the art style looks too much like Yu yu Hakushou!”, though.)

In addition,
the glorification of WWII in Anime, game, and manga is never, not the first time Koreans are experiencing.
I can think of many examples…
I saw a Korean character in SRWOG (a Japanese GBA game) saying “Tora tora tora”
before the final battle operation. That quote was from Japanese soldiers in WWII.
Most Koreans were used to ignore these kind of things and just enjoy.

Plus, several people were worrying about its “shounen-ai” expression
broadcasted by “kids” station in Japan.

Actually, Korean people did not (could not) stop Hetalia Anime broadcast.
Koreans have no such rights. They can only persuade and protest about the anime.
The Japanese TV station decides it. They said that they had “various circumstances”.
The real reason might be more complicated than people are thinking.

The Japanese TV station did not broadcast the show and Koreans got cooled down a lot for now.
So far, Koreans are OK with Hetalia’s DVD and mobile phone premise, I think.

-
“The show is still available online for those who still want to watch it but the Koreans are also trying to stop that”
->I think you are talking about Youtube broadcast or something.
Online broadcast is illegal. Completely illegal.
In order to watch this anime, you should buy the DVD.
(Japanese people can afford it through mobile phone service, too.)
I think the Japanese anime company is stopping the online broadcast.
They would not be able to make money if everyone watches the anime online.

“How the hell this show insults Korea if they don’t even appear on it. ”
->On the official Hetalia anime website, there definitely was Korea on the list.
You could see the official character design and profile of Korea.
Maybe the animation did not have Korea “yet” at the beginning of the season.
They were going to have Korea at some point.
(Koreans stopped it, so it is hardly going to happen in the furture.)

“…several young Korean’s sliced their finger in protest…”
-> Please, believe me, not much Koreans go THAT far.
That issue (led by some Korean nationalists) and this Hetalia issue (led by Koreans
who are interested in anime a lot….I would say….Korean Otaku?) are completely different.
They have different reasons, different point of view, different reaction, etc.

-

Still, in my opinion, I also think that the way Koreans approached the anti-Hetalia movement was not the best.
They could take time and think of more…smarter and cooler ways.

I just hope that there will be a peaceful resolution…."

Review of 'The Flower of Evil' Volume 1

2009-01-30T21:16:00.006-06:00

(In Korean: 악의 꽃)

(SPOILERS)

Since reading Goong, Metal Heart, and Love SOS, I've come to think that manhwa is pretty decent. So I started reading The Flower of Evil with a very high expectation, especially since the general response about this manhwa at soompi was positive, and the title sounded cool in Korean ("Aak-eauee Cgot"... by 'cg' I mean the Japanese "k," like "sodeska"). It's been a few weeks since I began, and it took that long to finish because the story wasn't interesting enough to motivate me. -_-

One of the several soompi members who shared my view was happy kudasai, who wrote here:

"ehhhh.
i admit, i was also sucked in by the art.
it IS really gorgeous[at least the cover art is...]
but the storyline is a bit...annoying.

so, the girl is obsessed, and what else?
the action was so slow, i just gave up.
not very captivating, even if it is dark or whatevs."

Actually I don't even think the art is "really gorgeous" really. It is better drawn than Love SOS, but somewhat worse than Goong; it's about the same level as Metal Heart, although they're completely different in style. Like Goong, the characters in The Flower of Evil are drawn more realistically. For example, the nose is bnot drawn as a <> or / or \, and hair is not the VVV as in a typical Japanese manga.

Seh-wa is the main heroine, and she has a jealous love for her brother, Seh-joon. The first chapter begins by asking the readers, "Would you rather receive love from everyone or only receive love from the person you like. Between the two, which one would you want?" Seh-wa has obviously made the choice to be loved only by her brother and to only love him. Seh-wa is a complete recluse at school (and supposedly she is the hottest girl too... some boys like her even more because she doesn't let them approach her), she always interrupts girls meeting with Seh-joon, and she leaves early for home whenever she pleases. The thing is... the manhwaga (or mangaka) seems to imply that that the two options are related and are mutually exclusive, but they're not! Seh-wa's just making a big deal for no reason.

At least in volume 1, Seh-wa's interaction with her brother is not very entertaining. Seh-wa simply complains and makes a ruckus every time Seh-joon does anything with his girlfriend, etc. Although Seh-wa's face is drawn very expressively, I can't sympathize with her because she's getting annoyed by things that don't matter.

Overall, Volume 1 of The Flower of Evil seems to lack focus. I'm going to read few more volumes to see if if there is anything better.

Visual quality: 9/10
General plot: 6/10
Comedy elements: 4.5/6
Action elements: 2/2
Romance elements: 1.5/3
Mystery elements: 2/3
Sophistication: 2.5/5
Realness: 4.5/6

Overall: (7.1/10)

Download @ mangatraders

Gusts Of Popular Feeling: Kenkanryu in the Realm of the Revisionists

2009-01-21T11:57:00.004-06:00

Although I've been reviewing Goong all this time, I finally hit something completely different: Kenkanryu, the "Hating Korea Wave" (or as the article linked below argues, "the 'Hate Korea' Wave").

"Kenkanryu in the Realm of the Revisionists"

I appreciate Matt for his sincere investigation of this very controversial topic. This Matt is much more reliable and genuine than the Matt of Occidentalism, who sounds pretty much like a typical western Japanophile having set out to defend pretty much anything negative about Japan.

These are his posts regarding Kenkanryu. Compare them with the Occidentalism posts: "Kenkanryu in the New York Times" and "A final word on Kenkanryu."

I liked them at first. They are rather more about the New York Times' article, "Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become Best Sellers in Japan", by Norimitsu Onishi, than the comic itself. Ok. This was the first thing that made Occi Matt sound a little fishy:

"So who is the writer of the article? Judging from his name, ‘Norimitsu Onishi’,
it would seem that he is Japanese, but I have my doubts about that. I would be
willing to bet that he is actually an ethnic Korean.
Norimitsu Onishi just doesnt hate Japan, he seems to hate the US too. In an article for the New York Times, he described terrorists killed by US soldiers as ‘victims‘, putting them in the same category as innocent restaurant workers killed by terrorists."

Strangely enough, one of the characters in the novel is Norimitsu Onishi (the scanlation could be wrong). Anyhow, occi Matt writes in his 2nd post:

"including the author of the NYT article, hack writer Norimitsu Onishi"

Why can't a Japanese be not be anti-Korean? Or rather, why does someone got to be a Korean if he's an anti-Japanese? Then I guess Hideki Kajimura, who made a very neutral presentation of the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute in his article "The Question of Takeshima/Tokdo," isn't a Japanese? And then he tries to get away with all this mischaracterization by saying it doesn't matter if he's a Korean or not. How pathetic.

"'It’s not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of
today!' In another passage the book states that 'there is nothing at all in
Korean culture to be proud of.'"
"In fact, it is clear from reading the comic that the character means that
Japan had laid the foundation of modern development in Korea, by bringing
modernization, economic growth, and social reform."

Simply it's this. These quotes all sound just really dumb, prejudiced, and uninformed, but as you can see Occi Matt tries to defend them as some sort rational historical arguments.

"Actually, not every character Japanese character is drawn with western features,
so this is a huge exaggeration on the part of the author of the article. He can
only get away with it because he knows that the majority will never actually see
the comic."

Actually, Occi Matt can get away with making this claim (not) because the majority will never actually see the comic (not).

"In the picture below, it may be possible to discern which characters are meant
to be perceived as Japanese and which are meant to be perceived as Korean:"
-Matt (Gusts of Popular Feeling)

"Interesting. Let's make a comparison here. Let's say that it was said that in the comic, apples were all drawn to look fresh, but the oranges were drawn to look rotten. The rebuttal to this? "Not all of the apples look fresh. See? I leave it to your judgement." How can anyone judge when no one is shown any oranges?" -Matt (Gusts of Popular Feeling)

Well, I also want to add that I just really love how all the links (or most of them) that Matt put out for us are "Not Found"; this article's a goner and the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at the University of Oxford got rid of Cleansing History, Cleansing Japan: Kobayashi Yoshinori’s Analects of War and Japan’s Revisionist Revival. I'm okay with a blog post or an MSN space disappearing, but definitely not a scholarly journal article from public view. So, here's the exact article that I accessed as HTML by Google in doc format.

Review of 'Goong' Volume 4

2009-01-03T19:48:00.002-06:00

(In Korean: 궁)

(SPOILERS)

In the previous post about Volume 3, I showed 3 pages where Yul lost the bet about whether Goong Eunich has feeling for him or not. Well, the punishment that Yul agreed to take for losing the bet is pretty scary: at the school festival, Yul dresses up as a bride and meets Goong Eunich as husband!!!

About the Shin Ramen + egg pun... I said before that I don't like Shin because he's cruel to Chae-gyeong; Yul arranged for Shin to be egged in public, so I don't like him any better. Shin's previous girlfriend, Min Hyo-rin, knows that Yul is responsible for the incident, but she doesn't want the marriage to work out, so she keeps quiet.

The court politics is pretty interesting. Yul was originally supposed to inherit the throne, but because the king died Shin got to be the prince. Yul's mother wants to change that, and, since Shin's father feels guilty about the whole situation, he can be easily convinced to appoint Yul as the new prince. Yul's mother (i.e. formally addressed as Debi-mama) is determined to give Chae-gyeong a hard time so that her life in the palace and marriage will not go smoothly. She asks Chae-gyeong to "stay by her side" when Prince Shin leaves for England, and then she constantly ridicules her (like, just when Chae-gyeong leaves the room, Yul's mother says, "A [princess]... not knowing any English and having translator beside her is so embarassing. How can she hang around with Prince Wililam (who's visiting from England).." - Prince William visits from England). This does have real effect on Chae-gyeong by Volume 5; she stops hanging around William and gets depressed a bit. Eventually she stops eating and loses a lot of weight. Volume 4 ends without having any of the issues being resolved, except that Chae-gyeong and Shin seem to have gotten a lot closer to each other than ever before.

Visual quality: 12/12
General plot: 9/10
Comedy elements: 5/6
Action elements: 2/2
Romance elements: 2.5/3
Mystery elements: 2.5/3
Sophistication: 6/6
Realness: 6/6

Overall: (9.4/10)

Download @ mangatraders
Download @ soompi

Review of 'Goong' Volume 3

2008-12-31T12:36:00.002-06:00

(In Korean: 궁)

(SPOILERS)

This time Chae-gyeong jokes over Shin's name by referring to his shoes, the Korean word for which is shin-bal (신발). "Shin... I like you a lot. Your smell is number 1!"

The couple stays at the wife's house for just few more days. There are several scenes that really show how pathetic the prince is... I just really hate him. He doesn't allow Chae-gyeong to extend her visit just a little longer, even though she cries and begs. When Chae-gyeong sleeps with her parents before their leave next morning, Shin gets really irritated because he's letting Chae-gyeong be a little happier. When they leave, he doesn't even allow her to say a proper good-bye to her parents by pushing Chae-gyeong into the car and raising the windows. Although the queen is willing to let Chae-gyeong visit her parents more often, Yi Shin intervenes and says something like, "I'm your husband, so I have the final say in wherever you go... It will depend on how well you carry out your Sejabin duties." (But he's planning to never allow Chae-gyeong to visit her family again.) It's enough to make Chae-gyeong tell him that he's gotten scary recently. I think that this complex psychology of Yi Shin can be best understood by reading a scene from Volume 2. He says that rich people who have always gotten everything in their life the way they wanted become unhappy when they see others having things that they can't get. For Yi Shin, it seems those things are normal life and family love.

There are more things in this volume, but I'll leave them to you to find out.

Visual quality: 12/12
General plot: 9.5/10
Comedy elements: 5/6
Action elements: 1/2
Romance elements: 2.5/3
Mystery elements: 3/3
Sophistication: 6/6
Realness: 6/6

Overall: (9.4/10)

Download @ mangatraders
Download @ soompi

Review of 'Goong' Volume 2

2008-12-30T00:02:00.002-06:00

(In Korean: 궁)

(SPOILERS)

I read like 5 volumes already, so I kinda lost what Volume 2 is like. I skimmed through it again, so I think I'm ready to write this review... Volume 2 of Goong does contain bits of funny scenes here and there, but it mostly concerns Shin Chae-gyeong's home-sickness, anxiety about her marriage, and the feeling of alien-ness in the palace. Even if certain parts of the story don't humour you right on the spot, they are there so that more interesting plots can develop later on. Chae-gyeong's bro is a freak. Because his sister was leaving him, he showed off his depression by leaning his head toward a tree and making weird expressions on his face. When the reporters came to the Shins' house on the day of Chae-gyeong's departure, Shin Chae-jun snatched a mike away from a female reporter and then introduced himself as the princess' bro. Guards drove him away, and the reporter said something like, "That was a lie. He was a just a random guy from the neighborhood." (actually this might be from Volume 1... Due to the circumstances, I can't read Goong right now :<)
Yi Shin (Chae-gyeong jokes, "I like you so much, Shin [Ramen]" ... there's also a pun about Shin Ramen noodles + eggs later in the series), the Korean prince, keeps ignoring Chae-gyeong, and to me it was pretty clear that he really wants his wife to be miserable as hell. He tells her directly that she's going to be his doll, and he's going to have a lot of fun with her. Their relationship does improve in the later volumes, so don't worry. Ah. Forgot to mention this. Chae-gyeong and Shin sleep together in the last chapters!!! Chae-gyeong only had 1 bed, and there was nowhere else at Chae-gyeong's house where Shin could sleep (i.e. Chae-jun had to use his room to study for exams). The sleeping scene was rather quite funny. Maybe I should have upgraded the Comedy and Romance scores by .5 each.

Visual quality: 12/12
General plot: 9/10
Comedy elements: 4.5/6
Action elements: 2/3
Romance elements: 2.5/3
Mystery elements: 2.5/3
Sophistication: 6/6
Realness: 6/6

Overall: (9.1/10)

Download @ mangatraders
Download @ soompi

anxiety amongst Korean anime fans

2008-12-28T12:52:00.003-06:00

(Dooly vs. Pikachu)

I found this pretty interesting journal article titled, "Manhwa, Manga, and Cultural Identity: Comic Readers and Nationalism in Korea" (i tried to upload the original to mediafire as alternative link, but it couldn't be b/c "virus found," so this is copy-pasted doc). It was written by a Japanese, Chie Yamanaka, and it's about the anxiety that Korean manhwa fans have about their consumption of Japanese manga and anime. I got to admit that I feel the same way about my liking of Japanese anime and music & that's why I think I quit my previous blog, Flavcorn, and started dokebiclub that focuses solely on Korean manhwa & animation. As I've written in a previous post titled, "Korean Animation," there aren't that many Korean animated works out there, so Korean manhwa fans can't help but watch Japanese anime.

The author points out an inherent contradiction with S. Korea's general rejection of Japanese pop culture (cultural ban on Japanese imports was lifted in 2003) - Korean pop culture is a hybrid culture that already includes Japanese cultural elements. Pepero, for example, is a copy of Japanese Pocky. Even the educational (i.e. elementary 1-6 grades, middle 1-3 grades, high 1-3 grades; instead of grades 1-12 as in the US) & legal systems are a continuation of the procedures established during the Japanese colonial rule.

(source)

Is it a problem? Yes it is! I'm like, "it's not too hard to invent your own snacks... why copy?" It's a problem because it allows hot-headed japanophile retards like James on Japan Probe repeat the Japanese racial superiority argument here. I tried to find out if Japan copied anything from Korea & I've yet to find at least 1. If I were to go back 5,000 years, I could find plenty that went from Korea to Japan, like introduction of agriculture, castle-building, metal type printing, porcelains, Buddhism, etc. So, maybe Japanese should forgive Korea for being a copycat just once in a while.

Back to the point... In the end, I think that Koreans should be able to enjoy Japanese culture. It's about time for Koreans to forgive Japan as a country for all the terrible things that happened from 1910 to 1945 & move on (but, that still doesn't mean that Japan can continue to distort history & deny things like comfort women.)

Review of 'Goong' Volume 1

2008-12-27T20:57:00.003-06:00

(In Korean: 궁)

A while back, people of all sorts - bloggers, forumers, youtubers, etc. - were all chanting, "Goong. Goong. Goong." so I looked it up & thought, "looks like crap," & completely forgot about it. Then few days ago, I got access to the entire series, and by then I had forgot that I had thought it was crap & had forgotten it, so I began reading it. My reaction then was, "omg this is uber."

I can't believe how beautiful the drawing is. Every page is so thoroughly detailed & artistic that they're actually uploaded as scans at animepaper.net. The usual anime style drawing doesn't even compare at all with how Goong's drawn b/c anime style is plastic & you can really enjoy it for like 2 seconds, & they essentially all look the same. The Koreans here actually look much more Korean. They weren't "beautiful" in the Caucasian style, which usually looks pretty sick in other manhwa's if "drawn beautifully."
Some people theorize that higher visual quality indicates inferior content overall, and vice versa; they actually make sense when you compare games for Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 with those of Nintendo Wii. Not in this case. Goong is superb in all possible ways. The story's pretty complex because it's about a highschool girl who is forced to a marriage with a Korean prince (this is fiction b/c the Korean royal family doesn't exist any more). Thanks to the strangely admirable yet realistic drawing style, the characters feel more human & their presence & their thoughts and feelings are much more dramatic. In other words, funny scenes are funnier. Sad scenes are sadder. Exciting scenes are rollercoastic.

I don't know what else to say. I'm going to have so much fun reading the other volumes! He he he. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Visual quality: 12/12
General plot: 9/10
Comedy elements: 5/6
Action elements: 2.5/3
Romance elements: 2.5/3
Mystery elements: 1.5/2
Sophistication: 3/3
Realness: 6/6

Overall: (9.2/10)

Download @ mangatraders
Download @ soompi

Korean animation

2008-12-26T19:07:00.002-06:00

Although manhwa today is a genre that contains numerous comic book titles competing directly with Japanese manga, Korean animation is almost unheard of in the West. Korean animation is several decades old (watch these videos), but still it is "relatively young." In its early years, most Korean cartoons were pirated off of Japanese animation's, so they couldn't be exported (although this practice did help sustain the industry). Eventually, around the 1990s, S. Korean animators got to export overseas, but their works were all subcontracts with foreign companies; for example, PowerPuff Girls, Simpsons, etc. were all drawn in S. Korea, but they are still known as American cartoons. During the same period, the S. Korean animation industry produced several commendable titles, such as Dooly, Hamos, Honggildong, Lazenca, and Restol, but most of them were not exported b/c no one wanted them. Rare appearances of Korean cartoons such as Cubix (which was based in a completely cosmopolitan setting without a single trace of anything Korean in it) on western tv channels were not enough to elicit interests about the Korean animation itself as a genre.

After year 2000, Korean animation did shine a bit with high-quality works such as Wonderful Days, but the situation essentially has remained the same as before. The number of animation series produced in S. Korea annually is still very small, and exports remain minimal. Partly the reason for this situation is that S. Korea is a very small country. Japan, for example, is 3 times as big as S. Korea in terms of population and landmass; therefore, it makes sense that S. Korean animation should be smaller in volume than the Japanese anime. But S. Korean animation isn't 1/3rd the size of Japanese anime; it's more like 1/1000th. I think it's because there is this feedback effect between the market size and production (i.e. $10 million Wonderful Days only made $2 million at the S. Korean box office) due to the fact that, at a similar production cost, Korean animation industry can sow only as much as a 1/3rd of the profit that the Japanese anime industry would make. There is a similar relationship between distribution and the size of a pre-existing fanbase. It's much more difficult for a Korean animation series to be licensed and released in the United States because there is no one who will buy it & sponsor it. It's hard for people outside of S. Korea to even get updated or informed about Korean animation because no one writes about them. Why? Because no one's interested. Why? Because no one writes about them. See the feedback effect?

(Yobi, The Five-Tailed Fox)

If you're interested, here are some Korean animation works from the recent years. The titles are linked to reviews.

(Oseam poster)

3 articles about Korean animation:

Review of 'Metal Heart' Volume 2

2008-12-26T12:18:00.002-06:00

(In Korean: 메탈하트)

(SPOILERS)

Min Si-ah comes to Hyun Min-woo's school (the fact that all the girls there are forced to wear the same uniform that appear in "Metal Heart 2" dating sim game is pretty ridiculous), and although Si-a's seated right next to him, Min-u can't even get close to her during break!

Min-u: "Hey guys, that's my seat..."
Girls: "Shut up! Don't get close to her, Min-u!"
Ppl wearing NBC suits (nuclear-biological-chemical): "We can't let you get close to her. It's our duty to keep the new student from catching the Min-u virus!"

When In-hyuk comes along, Girls: "...let me have In-hyuk virus!"
Min-sia: "What's going on?" Girl: "It's just that Min-u's an ota.." Nuri quickly puts the girl to sleep & says, "...okaku when it comes to studying."

I couldn't help laughing and laughing again reading this volume, but I thought the story went too far when the body scanner goes berjerk with its cords grabbing onto naked girls waiting for their physical examinations.

Visual quality: 8.5/10
General plot: 6/10
Comedy elements: 6.5/7
Action elements: 3/3
Romance elements: 1.5/2
Otaku elements: 7.5/8
Realness: 1.5/4 (the body scanner)

Overall: (7.8/10)

Download @ mangacopycat

Review of 'Metal Heart' Volume 1

2008-12-25T12:35:00.003-06:00

(In Korean: 메탈하트)

I'm not an otaku, but I've got to admit that this pretty fun to read. Well, if you're an otaku, you will love Metal Heart because it is about an otaku like you (although, I didn't know that there were otaku's in S. Korea)! This manhwa almost read like a Japanese manga because of the frequency of Japanese terms & phrases like "fu fu fu," "bishoujo," "otaku," "cosplay," etc. If it weren't for the Korean names, which are pretty easy to pronounce, anyone would have mistaken Metal Heart as a fun Japanese manga.

When I was reading Love SOS, for some reason I wasn't all that satisfied with how the sceneries were drawn, and, with reading Metal Heart, I think I can understand why. I realize that the drawing style is almost indistinguishable (with exception of filled, black eyes instead of clear European eyes) from that of most Japanese manga's.

(SPOILERS)

Metal Heart is a romance/sci-fi story.... a dating sim game in real life. So, this major consumer electronics company (Mega Tech?) is developing a powerful android soldier and a dating sim game, "Metal Heart 2," and.... (I don't get this part) the company decides to use the android for Metal Heart 2's development to collect more realistic data (i.e. movement, perspective, etc. ??) for the game's development. The company hires Hyun Min-u, who's a world champ at the fighting version of Metal Heart (think of it as an anime version of Mortal Kombat) to beta test "Metal Heart 2." Here it gets even more confusing. Somehow during the first test, Min-u inserts the wrong DVD (i.e. the fighting game instead of the dating sim??) and causes the android to become uncontrollable; it breaks loose from its egg and meets Min-u in real life when he's at a cosplay event. Thus, the dating sim starts in real-life as well, and it is up to Min-u to end the game successfully and prevent the android, Min Si-a, from self-destructing ??? ...except, Min-u completely sucks at dating sim games!

Visual quality: 8.5/10
General plot: 7/10
Comedy elements: 6/7
Action elements: 2/3
Mystery elements: 0.5/1
Otaku elements: 7.5/8
Realness: 2/4 (it was ok that the sci-fi was a bit too far-fetched, but Si-a's interaction with Min-u was too plastic)

Overall: (7.8/10)

Review of 'LOVE SOS' Volume 6

2008-12-24T01:00:00.004-06:00

(In Korean: 사랑 SOS)

Visual quality: 7.5/10
General plot: 8/10
Comedy elements: 5/6
Action elements: 2.5/3
Romance elements: 3/3
Mystery elements: 1.5/2
Sophistication: 5/5
Realness: 5.5/6

Overall: (8.4/10)

Review of 'LOVE SOS' Volume 5

2008-12-24T00:49:00.003-06:00

(In Korean: 사랑 SOS)

Visual quality: 7.5/10
General plot: 8.5/10
Comedy elements: 4/6
Action elements: 2.5/3
Romance elements: 1.5/2
Mystery elements: 1.5/2
Sophistication: 4.5/5
Realness: 5/6

Overall: (8.0/10)

Download Volume 5

Review of 'LOVE SOS' Volume 4

2008-12-23T19:50:00.005-06:00

(In Korean: 사랑 SOS)

Visual quality: 7/10
General plot: 9/10
Comedy elements: 4.5/6
Action elements: 2.5/3
Romance elements: 1.5/3
Mystery elements: 2.5/3
Realness: 5.5/6

Overall: (7.9/10)

Torrent Volume 4

Review of 'LOVE SOS' Volume 3

2008-12-23T10:36:00.007-06:00

(In Korean: 사랑 SOS)

(SPOILERS)

On the first day of school, Danbi finds herself talking with Ok Chandol, Ji Hye (used to be called ‘Viper Cleopatra’ when she was a gangster in Japan), and the ‘4 Fallen Angels,’ (a reference to Paradise Lost?) who are Hansol, Sungmin, Dohyeon, and Bada. Danbi learns that her eyes were once Su-yeong’s (Sungmin’s sister)

I'm curious if violence is a common thing in high schools in Corea because all the characters in LOVE SOS seem so accustomed to it. For example, when Hansol finds out that Chandol gave a copy of Sungmin’s diary to Danbi, she frets because she thinks Hansol and Chandol will fight each other… at school.

The cover page is much better than the others where Danbi’s just randomly doing something. It could be a hint to how Danbi’s current relationships might conclude in the end. It's definitely not a colored version of a scene in this volume (as some manga covers are).

Visual quality: 7/10
General plot: 8.5/10
Comedy elements: 4/6
Action elements: 2/3
Romance elements: 2.5/3
Mystery elements: 3/3
Realness: 5.5/6

Overall: (7.9/10)

Torrent Volume 3

dokebiclub mascot

2008-12-22T20:39:00.002-06:00

She's going to make a great baseball player. : )

Review of ‘LOVE SOS’ Volume 2

2008-12-22T11:00:00.007-06:00

(In Korean: 사랑 SOS)

Back at the hospital, Danbi is visited by Hansol, who asks if Danbi’s newly arrived roommate (Arum) is Sung-oo. When Hansol says that the girl seems to fake her voice, Danbi gets rlly mad and makes so much ruckus that people come in to check on the two. Danbi apologizes and takes Hansol outside because he keeps peeking on “Arum” (he’s actually trying to see who she really is).

Hansol takes out a cigarette to smoke, but Danbi smacks the cigarette out of his hand with strong disapproval. Although Hansol tries to justify himself by saying that he’s “almost” 17, Danbi replies, “17 isn’t an adult,” which makes Hansol laugh. I assumed that he laughs because Danbi sounds cute and naïve, but it’s actually because, as he says, he started smoking when he was only 13 years old. He explains, “So I’d get yelled by your aunt.” The “miserable introduction” is all that Hansol can manage to say about his complex relationship with his “mother.”

Hansol pulls Danbi onto his motorcycle, and, saying, “oh yea, you can’t see” (remember that Danbi had lost her eyes in the beginning of Volume 1, but her vision was recovered with a pair of eyes donated by Su-yeong, who’s now dead) as an excuse, he hugs her tightly for a joke. Just then, they see Han Bada walking by, so Hansol calls him and reveals to Danbi that they’re very close friends. I personally think Hansol and Sungmin look cooler, but Han Bada is supposedly a beautiful pretty boy.

Saying that “something just came up,” Hansol asks Bada (name literally meaning “sea”) to take Danbi home on his bike and walks away. Since it seems a bit unnatural that Bada is casually walking by a hospital, he explains that he lives nearby, and he is the son of the doctor who performed surgery on Danbi. Bada riding the motor bike reminds her of the guy who "saved" her, so Danbi asks him if he met her before by the Han River; nope. To make sure, Danbi keeps touching his back but stops when Bada complains. When they arrive at aunt's house, Bada gives Danbi her pendant (which in Vol. 1 Danbi gave to the guy @ Han River, but coincidentally Bada had it later and wouldn't give it back to her), and Danbi asks him if he wants in exchange. He wants a kiss xxxx xxx xxxx.

Danbi gets inside the house and finds Hansol all naked (I wonder how he got to the house first) after taking a shower. Although Danbi freaks out, Hansol asks, "you're blind, so why does it matter?"

Visual quality: 7.5/10
General plot: 8.5/10
Comedy elements: 5/6
Action elements: 2.5/3
Romance elements: 2.5/4
Mystery elements: 2.5/3
Realness: 5.5/6

Overall: (8.1/10)

Download Volume 2
Torrent Volume 2

Review of ‘LOVE SOS’ Volume 1

2008-12-21T11:31:00.007-06:00

(In Korean: 사랑 SOS)

LOVE SOS is a pretty interesting manhwa that somehow starts its story in Japan, just like Very! Very! Daisuki that I read two days ago. I’m starting to get a sense of how Korean manhwa is different from a Japanese manga… According to Wikipedia’s entry on manhwa, Korean manhwa reveals more Asian traits and has more realistic hair styles. I'm not sure about the first point, but I must agree that the manhwa characters tend to have more hair lines. That difference should be an interesting change for a regular mangaworm. There are several really well-drawn scenes, where Dan-bi looks really fierce or pretty pretty, but mostly I had hard time connecting the characters' Caucasian look with their Korean ethnicity (maybe thinner eyelashes may make them look more Korean).

(SPOILER)

Volume 1 starts with a cheesy scene involving Dan-bi and her mother, in which it is revealed that they’re a yakuza’s family (dad is also Korean). Other gangs’ bigotry against Dan-bi and her Korean gang has got her into a lot of fights, so the mother pleads her daughter to not fight again. I started thinking that LOVE SOS must be a cheap manhwa with a terrible storyline and a bunch of fight scenes, but I found a pretty exciting duel develop by the end of the first chapter. All the violence would eventually lead to Danbi's loss of both of her eyes and her moving to Korea, where she is hospitalized. I thought that Dan-bi would remain blind for the rest of the series, but the medical know-how’s had advanced enough in the story that she could get a new pair of eyes. For the first few days, Dan-bi’s vision is bleary, and this is when she gets visited by all these handsome boys (for various reasons…. it seems that one of them had already met her by the Han River when she was getting harassed by some strangers). I think Danbi's loss of vision makes a good plot (as long as she can get it back) b/c love has a lot to do with one's vision; Danbi's handicap means that we readers have to speculate who the visitors were, and, even after Dan-bi’s vision is fully restored, Danbi is able to make playful jokes to people around her who still think that she is blind. Another interesting turn in the plot is that Dan-bi gets invited over by her relatives. Her cousin, Maehyang, promises to make Dan-bi into “a woman that can be loved,” (ew) and, surprisingly, Dan-bi seems interested by the end of the volume.

Visual quality: 7/10
General plot: 8/10
Comedy elements: 4/5
Action elements: 3/4
Romance elements: 3/5
Mystery elements: 2.5/3
Realness: 6/7 (degree of less fakeness & cheezy time-wasting scenes)

Overall: (7.6/10)

'Very! Very! Daisuki' vol 1 ch 1

2008-12-20T21:16:00.001-06:00

(In Korean: 배리! 배리! 다이스키)

I was surfing the web looking for manhwa-related stuffs & came upon this title. I wondered, "why 'daisuki' (I love you, in Japanese) in a title of a manhwa?" Immediately all sorts of theories came up in my mind & they were mostly disagreeable stuffs, so I just decided to forget about the title & move on. But then, I didn't find anything interesting elsewhere, so I came back to the manhwa. The synopses provided for this manhwa by the Korean sites were all the same:

"독도는 우리 땅이야! 왕 쪼잔한 놈아!"
지구를 위해 숲을 사고픈, 주변....
"Dokdo is our territory! You xxx xxx xxx!"

I was like, "uhhh.. the manhwa cover doesn't look as if it'd be concerned with a territorial dispute....." But this got me pretty curious & so I spent a long time searching for a scanlation of the first 2 chapters. I found vol 1 chap 1, but couldn't find chapter 2 which is also out somewhere on the web.

v1c1 was quite interesting, but I don't think I can give a rating on a single chapter of an entire volume. The drawing quality is not bad, but, for comparison, I'll say that it's not as good as that of the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga's that I read few years ago. I really like the drawing of Chiyoshi's grandfather. He looks serious & ancient enough for his role as a scary grandpa. A cute or gay-looking grandpa wouldn't fit with all the dramatic interactions that he has with Chiyoshi. The first chapter of the first volume of Very! Very! Daisuki is filled with funny & silly moments, but I can't say much more about from reading just the first chapter.

(Read a review of it here)

Download v1c1
Torrent v1c1

Alternative to current anime/manhwa character style

2008-12-20T13:16:00.003-06:00

Someone did agree with my complaints (1 & 2) about anime's inaccurate presentation of Asian features. See my post @ flavcorn on "Japanese anime characters who look Japanese," & read the comments. The tacit assumption among the anime fans seems to be that Asians are just ugly, or they don't look all the interesting, and therefore they would look terribly in a realistic animation.

People who think Asians are ugly just don't know enough about Asia, its traditions, & its pop culture. As I've shown here, Europeans are beautiful & ugly in their own way; it's not simply "oh you have blonde hair & blue eyes, so you are automatically pretty." Anyone could argue with me about this, but why bother? The only thing that matters is that accurate representation of Asian features can be superior to the current anime style (which.... evolved that way gradually for various, legitimate reasons that I've outlined here).

Only reason why Asians don't appear too often in anime's & manhwa's is that the 2D outlines don't suit Asians' gradual facial contours. But I'm sure that, in time, animators will be able to draw with multiple, overlapping transparency layers that will allow Asian facial features to be portrayed accurately.

(click to enlarge)